City (pop., 2000: 344,284), south-central Kansas, U.S. On the Arkansas River , the city was founded in 1864 as a trading post on the site of a Wichita Indian village; it developed with the Texas cattle trade along the Chisholm Trail and the rapid spread of agricultural settlement along the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad Co. In the 1870s it was a major cattle-shipping centre.
It developed as a centre of the aircraft industry in the 1920s. Aircraft construction continues; other economic activities include oil refining, grain processing and storage, and livestock marketing.